Two Vancouverites – one Canadian, one German refugee – are starting anew in Paris

On the road again

Sorry I haven’t been terribly communicative for the past few months. We’ve been keeping happily busy with visiting friends, short trips, and in my case, some volunteer work that ironically had me working full-bore while the rest of Paris made their July & August exodus from the city.

I think I got blog-fatigue. Also, I was torn on what to write: judging by the feedback, what people most like is what I call “Paris expat p0rn”: stories of cafe life, lovely markets, visits to charming villages, etc. And, while we certainly enjoy that aspect of living here, its about as accurate as assuming that life in Vancouver is limited to strolling the Seawall, walking through the Anthropology museum, hanging out on the Capilano suspension bridge, or eating salmon.

On the other hand, it does make for easier updates: a few pics of a crumbling village & voilà, a blog post!

In fact, that’s what I normally would have done right now, since we are approaching the end of a 2 week bike tour through Burgundy. Unfortunately, we’ve had another problem with theivery and so alas our camera containing oodles of travelling-France p0rn is now AWOL.

Overall though it’s been a fun trip, aside from one ambitious day of 95 km of climbing innumerable hills only to lose all elevation gained by descending again. I felt like Sisyphus after a few hours. Even HerrKaa, the Energizer Bunny on a Bike, was pretty exhausted. But it has been a good excuse to eat large helpings of garlicky snails and down copious amounts of hearty red wine.

Right now we are in Beaune, the very heart of Burgundy’s best wine region (the Cote d’Or), hanging out at the….library.

Don’t worry, we’ve already had our fill of dégustations and viticulture lore; now we need to fill in our applications for the bargain French classes offered by the City of Paris, which fill up fast as I learned first-hand last winter. Since the forms only came online yesterday, we have been hogging their internet station this morning to get all the info needed to complete forms for 3 separate applications (each in triplicate – vive l’administration francaise!).

Sarah,
You really must stop talking about your unfortunate victimhood at the hands of thieves. Upon hearing of this Gordon is beginning to get an eye twitch and a rash is developing on his upper right wrist… mon Dieu!